grass … you know, the garden … I keep an eye—’
‘All good.’ I didn’t need his full CV. ‘Look, mate, I’m a friend of theirs. Not here to nick the family silver.’ I put the safety back on and shoved the weapon into the waistband of my jeans. ‘I’m—’
‘Military?’ He’d managed to get his head back on an even keel.
My turn to nod. ‘Yup.’ I tapped the weapon. ‘Sorry about that. You got me worried.’
He was so relieved I thought he might try to reach out and hug me. ‘You got me worried too. You’re not the first person I’ve seen snooping around here since they left. Some were your mates in uniform, obviously. I can always tell them a mile off. But the others weren’t.’
‘Others? When? Did you ID them? Maybe see a vehicle? Do the police know?’
He went quiet for a while. Maybe five questions at once were a bit much for him.
‘A couple of nights ago. I didn’t see ’em close up, but there were two of them. And no sign of a car. I don’t bloody bother with the law any more. We’ve had a load of machinery nicked these last few months, and they’re never around when you need them …’
I let him drone on about diggers and cutters and balers going missing. Then he started harking back to a golden era when everybody around here left their doors unlocked and there were more bobbies on the beat, and I decided enough was enough.
‘Look, mate, I’ve got to go now. Report back. But when Sam and Ella reappear can you let them know Tony called in? Tell them hello from me?’
He said he would.
‘But carry on keeping an eye out, eh?’
Gerry nodded again, slowly this time, as Middle England’s deep-seated trust of authority kicked in and began to make his world a nicer place.
He shifted slightly awkwardly from one foot to the other and I thought for a moment that he was going to tug his forelock. Instead he turned and trudged back the way he must have come.
I only stayed long enough to replace the hatch cover beneath the hut.
PART FOUR
1
Salisbury, Wiltshire
Friday, 27 January
11.21 hrs
Ken Marabula had been my first sergeant in Malaysia. His favourite gag was to warn us young troopers not to turn our backs on him at mealtimes. He told us that in Fiji in his grandfather’s day they’d often marinate a guest or two in coconut milk and add them to the menu. ‘Nothing personal, man. They just loved the taste of Long Pig.’ He’d lick his lips like Hannibal Lecter and give us the kind of leering grin that made us sleep with one eye open.
In his quieter moments he used to admit that cannibalism is not actually as popular, these days, as it once was, particularly in the UK. I found that quite reassuring, especially when we got pissed together on a big night out, but I still kept my distance from the earth oven. They’d dig a big hole in the back garden, then cook chicken and fish and stuff on a bed of charcoal embers covered with leaves.
Ken and his fellow islanders followed in the footsteps of local legends, like Laba and Tak, the boys who’d held off at least two hundred and fifty Communist insurgents at Mirbat in ’seventy-two with a twenty-five pounder, an assault rifle and – because Tak had been shot in the shoulder – only three arms between them.
Laba had taken a round in the jaw early on, then one in the throat after fuck knows how many hours, which left Tak holding the fort. Neither of them got VCs because the Head Shed didn’t want to go public on the Regiment being there, but Laba was still the only member of the Special Air Service to have had a statue dedicated to his memory.
Ken had enlisted in Nandi with a few of his mates and got the first plane to Heathrow. He’d kicked off his basic comms training near Salisbury, fallen for a local girl and still called it home forty-odd years later.
He had been to some places and done some things in the meantime, first with the Regiment and then on the Circuit. The Iranian Embassy balcony in 1980 was the
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